Well I’m up to my ears in work both in my real estate business and the camera show. I am most excited to be hosting the first PhotoFair event in Portland, OR. Yes my friends, after 42 years in the Bay Area, we have expanded to Rip City!
Here in the metro Portland-Vancouver area, photography is alive and well. Film is undergoing a strong resurgence and PhotoFair is a great place to find deals on new and used gear as well as awesome hard to find items. I hope you all can come on Saturday, August 13th at the Jackson Armory.
Wifey in the car, Bessa T, Zeiss Biogon 2/35 Tri-X f2.8 scanned with Dimage DS III
I have been fiddling about with film again myself. I shot some classic Tri-X film through my Bessa T with the Zeiss ZM Biogon 35/2 I wrote about last month and the classic Canon 85mm 1.9 and 50mm 1.2 rangefinder glass. That was fun and I even managed to get half the shots in focus 😉
I love the classic rangefinder experience but I do miss the all in one viewing that you get with a Leica. That said the little Bessa T has a pretty good rangefinder. I just did a develop only on the film and then used my dinosaur Minolta Dimage Dual Scan III to digitize the images.
Bessa T with Zeiss 2/35
The Bessa T is fun little camera that offers up a classic rangefinder experience for a reasonable price. It is easy to load, much more so than any M3 or earlier Leica. It has a basic light meter with simple left and right red LEDs for over under exposure and solid center LED green light for proper exposure. This is a simple center-weighted style meter that requires the user to think about back-lit subjects and strong lighting on sand and snow, etc. You know, classic photography 🙂
I also found a sweetheart deal on Canon’s first auto-focus professional body, the original EOS-1. I have a roll of Ilford HP-5 plus and I am using all my delicious L glass with that one 🙂 This EOS-1 was a thousand dollar camera back in the late 1980s and yet today they can be found for under a 100 bux! Mine is working perfectly and it has a very respectably fast AF. This is basically the film version of my 5d Mk II, with 30 years of dated tech 😉
For me film is a fun way to enjoy photography the old fashioned way. You have to think a bit about the shot and visualize exposure and compensation. But modern digital is still awesome and I will admit that I do NOT want to go back to a film only universe 😉
Film just gives a certain look that is difficult to replicate in digital. Couple that with the whole experience of not seeing the results right away and film is still a great exercise in the art of photography.
I look forward to finding some more amazing deals on awesome gear this Saturday at PhotoFair.
'Couv' Camera 